Cindy Crisanto, an ironworker apprentice, says the child care benefit is “a lifesaver” that allows her to pursue a career in construction. She is one of the few women ironworkers on the construction site at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.
Credit: Courtesy of Cindy Crisanto
After bouncing around in several job paths, including retail sales, office receptionist and warehouse worker, Cindy Crisanto has begun a potentially lucrative career as a welder and ironworker — a field with very few women.
She made that switch with the aid of a new state apprenticeship program that provides child care funds during her on-the-job training, helping her to overcome an obstacle many women face in trying to enter the construction trades while also raising a family.
Crisanto — a single mother of two elementary school-aged boys — is receiving about $800 a month in state subsidies for child care expenses, a part of a push to bolster the ranks of women and other underrepresented people into such male-dominated jobs as plumbers, electricians, carpenters and welders. She is now in her first year of an apprenticeship program run by an ironworkers union local in connection with Cerritos College, a community college near Los Angeles.
“It makes a huge difference. It’s a lifesaver,” Crisanto, 36, of Los Angeles, said of the subsidy. The money is particularly helpful because the very early work hours at construction sites make it hard to find and otherwise afford child care at schools and regular centers, she and others explain. Under the apprenticeship with Ironworkers Local 433, she begins working at 6:30 a.m. installing window and elevator structures at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art under construction south of downtown Los Angeles.
The child care subsidy is part of a wider campaign spearheaded by Gov. Gavin Newsom to expand apprenticeship opportunities in many different fields for Californians usually not pursuing college degrees.
The goal is to enroll a half-million Californians in state-supported apprenticeship programs by 2029 — a huge increase from the approximately 84,000 in 2018 when Newsom announced the effort.
The related child care funding comes from the Equal Representation in Construction Apprenticeship Grant (ERICA), for which the state has appropriated a total of $15.6 million over two years. A participant in pre-apprenticeships — readiness programs that often get them up to speed in math and general work skills — can receive up to $5,000 a year for child care. Those, like Cristano, in the next step, the actual paid on-the-job apprenticeships, can get up to $10,0000 annually.
Officials and labor experts say the child care money represents a new strategy after past efforts to diversify the trades by gender showed little progress. The program is supposed to help “women, non-binary and underserved communities interested in a rewarding career in the building and construction industry,” according to the state Division of Apprenticeship Standards. (Men are eligible as well, but they are not the prime target.) The child care grants became available last year from the state budget and are distributed via labor unions, nonprofit organizations and colleges chosen in a competition.
Another nearly $9 million is earmarked for campaigns to recruit more women, to run career fairs and to offer workplace training.
The goal is to turn those women, many of whom barely made ends meet in the past, into skilled construction professionals earning close to $100,000 a year.
Although the aid seems to be encouraging more women to enroll as apprentices, officials say it is too early to determine whether the program will significantly boost the number who persist through the four years or so the paid trainings can require.
Some 37 women are among the nearly 1,200 apprentices in Cerritos College’s ironworkers program run with the union, according to Graciela Vasquez, the school’s dean of continuing education. But that is about 40% higher than before the child care money and the accompanying push to attract more women into the trades, she said.
In the past, female participation in state-authorized apprenticeships across California could hardly have been smaller.
Women comprise only about 10% of the nearly 95,100 current job training apprenticeships that are formally recognized by the state and receive some state money across many industries, according to the Division of Apprenticeship Standards. Even worse, just 3% or 4% of apprentices in building trades such as carpentry, plumbing, ironworking and electrical are women. However, women are strongly represented in a few apprenticeships, mainly in health care, child care and culinary services.
With the child care grants and other funds for recruitment and training, enrollment of women apprentices in construction appears to be moving “in the right direction,” said Adele Burnes, deputy chief of the state apprenticeship standards agency. “We hope to start to see higher percentages in one, two or three years from now.”
Finding and affording child care can be more difficult because of construction fields’ early work shifts and the need sometimes to work far from home. So the grant had to be “a bit more flexible if we really want to help people in the trades,” said Burnes. The subsidies can be used for private babysitters, even friends and family members, with proper proof of the work hours, as well as for day care centers and after-school care.
Crisanto first earned a certificate in welding at a local adult school and was connected to the career apprenticeship, which includes some classes run by Cerritos College. She uses the child care grant to pay a relative who gets her children ready and takes them to school in the morning. That allows her to pursue a career path that is much more fulfilling and well paid than her past jobs.
She and other women say they sometimes face doubts and harassment in a male-dominated industry. But she added, “I love what I do. That’s what keeps me going, seeing I can keep up with the guys and keep learning. I am making something of myself. And this is my reward: my career.”
The subsidies may make a difference, said Felicia Hall, a workforce development manager for Tradeswomen, an organization that recruits women into construction careers and runs apprenticeship readiness programs across California. “That is one thing we hear from all our mentees, even men. Child care is the No. 1 thing that hinders them from completing the program,” she said.
(The apprenticeships are usually run by councils of labor unions and industries, with the state looking over their shoulders.)
In some locations, the overwhelming number of men in a trade has caused more men than women to receive the child care subsidy, officials report. Nevertheless, Jeremy Smith, of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, said the funds are especially helpful to keep women on the job and make “their work-life balance much easier.”
Still, with state revenues in decline, it is not certain whether the money will continue to be available after 2025. Women apprentices hope the program survives.
Rocio Campos, an apprentice ironworker, on a recent construction job at the Los Angeles Zoo. Child care subsidies are important for her.Cerritos College
Rocio Campos came to the U.S. from El Salvador at age 10 and now lives in Littlerock in northern Los Angeles County. Since she was a teenager, she held various jobs, including office work, sales, cashier, drafting and design. Sometimes, she took a second job on weekends to help pay bills. Tired of instability and low pay, she tried to enter a nursing program at a community college but wound up on a waiting list because it was overcrowded. Instead, she took a welding class and enjoyed that. That led to an apprenticeship with Ironworkers Local 433 and jobs assembling solar energy panels and windmills.
A divorced mother, she was able to get between $800 and $1,200 monthly in ERICA child care funds that she uses to pay her mother to take care of her two sons, ages 11 and 17, while she is on the job, sometimes out of state. Previously, she paid her mother out of her own wages. The grant “really helped me out a lot,” Campos, 36, said. And she finds on-the-job satisfaction from “assembling things from bottom to top.”
An ironwork apprentice, for example, usually starts earning about $24 an hour, and that goes up to $47 or so over four years by the time they graduate and become a journey person. Some work can be seasonal with unpaid breaks between projects, but overtime pay can be substantial as well.
Dulce Martinez, 34, of San Jose, emigrated from Mexico at age 11 and, after high school, attended community college on and off. She held a series of jobs — from a house cleaner to a school health clerk — and became the mother of two boys, now 10 and 12. But several years ago, her husband, a construction worker and house painter, suffered an on-the-job injury that makes it difficult for him to work steadily.
With the family’s income strained, she began looking around for a better-paid career. Martinez’s father and other relatives are ironworkers, but she never before thought of following in their footsteps. She then saw a Facebook page from the Silicon Valley-based social justice and training organization Working Partnerships USA, recruiting women into construction and technical jobs. She entered a pre-apprenticeship readiness program and used the ERICA funds for several months to pay a relative to watch her boys since her husband was not always available or well enough.
Then in July, she landed her current apprenticeship as an instrumentation and controls technician at the Santa Clara Water District. She is learning to install and fix the water system’s many meters and controls for pressure, chlorine and other factors. She is earning about $85,000 a year, compared with $35,000 at her old school job, and will be getting raises as the four-year apprenticeship proceeds.
Another attraction is that work is less physically taxing than the electrical or plumbing jobs she first considered. “It was something I couldn’t pass up. Physically, I’m going to be OK, and monetarily it’s going to be good for me and my family,” she said.
With the vast majority of students at Algodones Elementary School in New Mexico residing at San Felipe Pueblo, the school and the Bernalillo school district are making efforts to turn around the high rates of school absenteeism in Native American communities. Pictured are Kanette Yatsattie , 8 , left, and his classmate Jeremy Candelaria, 10, hanging out by a board depicting the race for best attendance at the school on October.
Credit: Roberto E. Rosales / AP Photo
As chronic absences have steadily decreased in California schools, the rate among Native American students remains consistently higher.
Persistent high chronic absence rates have resulted in schools increasing their focus on addressing students’ basic needs, emphasizing mental health support, and boosting outreach efforts to reconnect with students amid the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, which closed California public schools beginning March 2020 and didn’t reopen until spring 2021.
Many Native American youth face challenges similar to other marginalized communities — such as poverty, systemic discrimination and poor health — but often with the added barrier of historical mistrust in state school systems due to the lingering impacts of removing Native American youth from their communities and confining them to federal boarding schools.
“With quite a few of our Native American learners, we’ve recognized that there has been a lot of trauma in the family,” said Heather Golly, superintendent of Bonsall Unified in San Diego County. “It affects everyone in the family when there is trauma.”
Chronic absence is defined as missing 10% or more of students’ expected attendance, whether for excused or unexcused reasons. For students on a typical 180-day school calendar, this totals to about one month of missed school in a given year. High chronic absentee rates concern educators and researchers alike as they reflect a significant loss of instructional time.
Chronic absenteeism among Native American students during the 2023-24 school year was much higher, at 33%, than the statewide rate of 20.4%, according to data from the California Department of Education (CDE). The statewide chronic absenteeism rate has been declining for Native American students since 2021-22, when numbers peaked at 43.6%.
The absentee rate disparity did not start with the Covid pandemic: The pre-pandemic rate of chronic absences was 21.8% for Native American students and 12.1% for all students.
The state Education Department recently published its annual School Dashboard, which shows lower rates for chronic absenteeism statewide because it includes only grades K-8. The state education data used throughout this story includes all grades, from TK to 12.
Every Native American student is a direct descendant or relative of someone who attended federal boarding schools from the mid 1800s until the mid 20th century, according to Ashley Rojas, policy director for Indigenous Justice. Native American students forced to attend boarding schools had their language, culture and family stripped from them, and Rojas sees echoes of that in contemporary American public schools.
Rojas said that every year, she hears from students who are taught the history of California statehood or missions in a way that erases Native American perspectives. She noted there are still many schools with mascots based on stereotypes of Native American people. Even though it is against California law, Native American students tell Rojas about being barred by their school administration from representing their heritage and spirituality during graduation.
“Every year, we deal with districts trying to remove this right from our young people, trying to tell them, ‘You can’t wear your feathers, you can’t wear your beads. You must fit into our image of a graduate,’” Rojas said. “Given the historical and ongoing traumatization of our students and communities by these systems, we just can’t stand for that.”
About 26,000 or about 0.4% of the state’s nearly 6 million students enrolled in public K-12 schools, including charter and alternative schools, are Native American. This number is likely an undercount because Native Americans are much more likely than any other group to identify themselves as belonging to two or more races, according to the Brookings Institute. They may be counted alongside other multiracial students with different backgrounds.
State education law lists several reasons for excusing students, but most excused absences, school officials say, are related to illness and mental health.
Native American students in California missed an average of 18.5 days of school in 2023-24 — more than any other race or ethnicity. Unlike the average California student, their absences were more likely to be unexcused than excused, according to the CDE, an issue pervasive across the state as noted in a recent PACE report.
Unexcused absences often mean students lacked documentation such as a note from a doctor or they provided no reason for their absence, or the reason they provided does not qualify as an excusable absence. A student can be labeled truant after more than three unexcused absences in one school year.
While all absences can hamper students in their academic and personal development given the loss of instructional time, only truancy involves the potential for punitive measures for parents, such as fines and jail time.
Colonization and repression has meant that many surviving Native American students are disconnected from their heritage and communities, said Rojas. But those who are still engaged with their communities will partake in spiritual ceremonies that include communal dancing, praying and time with elders. These holidays aren’t acknowledged by California school calendars, so students can rack up unexcused absences, putting them at risk of being considered criminally truant.
“When your school already makes you feel like you don’t belong, and then they’re going to punish you for going to the only places that you do belong, it’s really going to be difficult to convince a young person that it’s important to be there,” Rojas said.
Absences reflect remnants of traumatic history
Chronic absences are often the result of systemic challenges, such as inconsistent transportation, food instability, violence in the home, homelessness, undiagnosed disabilities and more. Higher rates of suspensions are also a factor. Out-of-school suspensions for Native American students accounted for 1.5% of absences compared with the state average of 0.9%.
Some of the highest chronic absence rates for Native American students in the state are along the state’s Northern coast. In Humboldt County, a larger proportion of students are Native American — 8.7% compared to 0.4% statewide — and 55.4% of them were chronically absent last year, compared with 27.3% countywide.
“Failing Grade: The Status of Native American Education in Humboldt County,” a report published by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Northern California and the Northern California Indian Development Council, examined the county’s “egregious” disparities in chronic absenteeism, as well as academic performance and discipline, noting that the troubled and violent history of federal boarding schools has left a lasting imprint on Native American communities in Humboldt.
The boarding schools, operated nationwide for about 150 years up until at least 1969, had a practice of separating Native American children from their families, cutting them off from their communities and cultures.
Some of the documented forms of abuse include solitary confinement, withholding of food, prohibiting Indigenous languages and cultural practices, and more. A report from the U.S. Department of the Interior in July found that nationwide, at least 973 Native American students died while at boarding schools, though the number is considered an undercount.
Federal boarding schools were “specifically designed to erase Native American people and Native American culture,” said Colby Smart, deputy superintendent of the Humboldt County Office of Education. “That doesn’t go away in one year, and it doesn’t go away in one generation.”
Native American communities today are still facing serious problems — including the legacy of colonization — that can contribute to chronic absentee rates among students. In Humboldt County, 75% of Native American students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, according to the California Department of Education. Smart also pointed to high suicide rates, substance abuse, health problems and poverty in local Native American communities.
Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified is located in Hoopa, a small town that is the site of the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s federal reservation and the former home to one of a dozen federal boarding schools in California.
The district has 774 Native American students, which is not just the majority of the district but more Native American students in a district than any other in the state. During the 2023-24 school year, 70% of these students were chronically absent, and Native American students missed an average of 36 days.
Notably, the most recent data shows that the opposite occurred in Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified, where it increased by 7 percentage points between 2023-24 and the year prior.
Partnerships with tribes offer solutions
High chronic absentee rates do not signal that Native American communities don’t value school or education, according to Rojas with Indigenous Justice.
“Indigenous people are super pro-education, but they just want to be sure that what is being learned is not going to cause further harm,” Rojas said.
A key factor in ensuring Native American students feel welcome and engaged at school is working in partnership with local Native American communities. There are large Native American communities in the Central Valley and Del Norte where students don’t have access to the same resources as Native American students in Humboldt County, where the Yurok Tribe is more politically engaged.
The Humboldt County Office of Education aims to help local districts tackle high chronic absentee rates through “pull” factors that engage parents and students, and make them feel welcome, even excited to attend school. For instance, local high schools offer the Indigenous language Yurok as a class that puts students on track for college, while connecting them with their heritage.
“If students feel like they belong, not only do kids go to school more, but their academic outcomes improve,” Smart said.
Culturally relevant curriculum can be an important way to engage Native American students, Smart said. The Humboldt County Office of Education is partnering with the San Diego County Office of Education as well as over 100 California tribes, Native American organizations and scholars to develop a state curriculum model for Native American studies. This curriculum is expected to be released next September.
In this curriculum, kindergartners might count acorns, a dietary staple, while learning the Yurok language; a middle school student can learn about traditional foods of Native Californians, while a high school student may study federal boarding schools.
In northern San Diego County, Bonsall Unified and the Pala Band of Mission Indians entered a partnership last year to better support Native American students. The agreement allows the district to share attendance information with key tribal leaders and hold joint meetings to discuss potential support for students and their families, all to increase school attendance.
If a student is missing school due to inconsistent transportation, the tribe might offer to sponsor the students’ bus fee. There is a new position in the works, a Pala attendance support specialist, whose job will include making home visits to chronically absent students and offering solutions based on each student’s needs.
During 2023-24, Bonsall Unified improved its chronic absence rates among Native American youth across all grades to 41% from a high of 50.9% in 2021-22.
The improvements have not only come from the agreement, which was spearheaded by district trustee Eric Ortega and Chairman Robert H. Smith of the Pala Band of Mission Indians, but from the groundwork that was laid over the course of several years.
About eight years ago, Bonsall Unified schools began hosting Pala Valley Day, an annual event for students to learn about local Native American history, with some of the presentations being made by Native American students.
Efforts since then have continued to foster a sense of belonging among Native American students. Middle and high school students recently took a field trip to visit the American Indian Studies department at Cal State San Marcos, and there is a mural in the works that will feature Native American students.
“When they belong — when they feel like they belong — they’re more in tune with being happy to be there and wanting to be there,” said Ortega about the district’s Native American students.
Many Native American students have faced challenges like inconsistent transportation, lack of tutoring and the need for counseling, which most other students statewide have also experienced in recent years.
In increasing their focus on collaboration with the Pala Band of Mission Indians, Golly and her staff have also found that students and their families are much more receptive to accepting support when offered by their tribal community.
As chronic absences steadily decrease, Golly attributes much of the success of those partnerships to the support from tribal leaders such as Chair Smith, who she said is “a wonderful partner, and he believes strongly in the power of education.”
The district also established a Native Learner Advisory Committee that schedules its meetings on the Pala reservation. They coordinated with the Pala learning center and with the tribal council to ensure meetings were scheduled at a time when more people can attend.
Golly, district superintendent, said it has been important for the district to show it is listening to requests from their Native American families, as well as returning to committee meetings “with something actionable” in response to feedback.
More recently, at an all-staff meeting, a panel of five Native American students presented to the entire certificated staff, sharing what they want their teachers to know about their culture, when they feel like they belong, and when they feel they don’t belong.
As Ortega put it, building trust is ongoing work that requires time and collaboration at multiple levels, from school leaders to tribal leaders to parents.
“We are right on the precipice of what we’re doing, and so anything can make it go wrong. It’s not perfect, but we want this to be our culture, our way of life,” he said about the partnership. “The more and more we do it, the more positive results we have, the better we’re going to be.”
EdSource data journalist Daniel J. Willis contributed to this report.
California needs to mandate bilingual education in districts with significant numbers of English learners and invest much more to support districts to offer it, according to a new report released Thursday.
The authors said California is far behind other states in enrolling students in bilingual programs, despite having published documents like the English Learner Roadmap and Global California 2030, that lay out a vision for significantly expanding bilingual education in the state.
“It’s particularly significant because of the loud promises the state has made on behalf of bilingual education,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation and one of the authors of the report. “When it comes down to actual resources devoted, they’ve come so far short.”
The authors of the report recommend three main actions for California state leaders to take: Expand bilingual education programs with more funding and requirements for districts to offer them; prioritize enrollment of English learners in bilingual programs; and invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs.
In order to expand bilingual education programs, the authors said California should follow the lead of Texas and pass legislation that requires districts to offer bilingual education if they have at least 20 students in any grade level that speak the same home language. In addition, they recommend the state provide districts more funding for every student enrolled in a bilingual program.
The authors said this “carrot and stick” approach in Texas has helped the state enroll a much higher percentage (36.7%) of English learners in bilingual programs. In contrast, California has enrolled only 16.4 % of English learners in bilingual programs.
The report cites research that shows bilingual education improves academic achievement, progress in learning English, retention of home language, high school graduation and college attendance, in addition to other benefits.
“Bilingual education should not be a partisan issue, because of the vast and wide-reaching benefits of it,” said Ilana Umansky, associate professor of education at the University of Oregon and one of the authors of the report. “It’s very telling that a state like Texas mandates bilingual education in a lot of circumstances and incentivizes bilingual education and has twice the enrollment of English learners in bilingual education as California.”
In addition to expanding the number of bilingual programs, the authors also called on state and district leaders to make sure there are spaces set aside in bilingual programs for English learners, that they are located in neighborhoods where English learners live or that they can easily reach by transportation.
“It’s critical to prioritize English learners, because it’s English-learner-classified students that most need and benefit from bilingual programs,” Umansky said.
Umansky said many dual-language immersion programs are often located in neighborhoods where most families speak English, because English-speaking parents are often the loudest advocates pushing for them. And she said some districts outright bar recent immigrant students from enrolling in bilingual programs, incorrectly assuming they are not beneficial for them.
Finally, the report’s authors are recommending the state also invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs and in making such programs more affordable for students. They pointed out that after voters passed Proposition 227 in 1998, limiting bilingual education in California, many bilingual teacher preparation programs were closed.
“Prop 227 had such a devastating effect on traditional bilingual teacher programs, we have got to invest in them. They have to be bigger, they have to be stronger, and we have to have support for the programs and support for the students,” Umansky said.
Proposition 227 was overturned in 2016, when voters passed a separate measure, Proposition 58.
“California has put its foot down about saying, ‘We believe in multilingualism, we’re going to get students to be multilingual,’” Umansky said. “Now is the moment to really start putting money and efforts behind those intentions.”
Kindergarten teacher Carla Randazzo watches a student write alphabet letters on a white board at Golden Empire Elementary School in Sacramento.
Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / AP Photo
California’s students have struggled in the five years since the pandemic closed schools across the state. But kids in many schools are bouncing back, returning to pre-Covid achievement levels. What’s working? How have some districts innovated to turn kids’ learning curves upward once again?
After analyzing student-level statewide data and visiting nine districts in each of the past three years, our team has made these discoveries:
Mindful policies make a difference
Nationwide, the pandemic erased nearly two decades of progress in math and reading. In California, average math proficiency decreased by 6.4 percentage points between 2019 and 2022, and reading proficiency dropped by 4 percentage points. Our work shows a modest positive effect of early reopening and federal recovery investments over this period. This highlights the importance of keeping schools open when it is safe to do so and prioritizing high-need students in reopening. Federal stimulus dollars also helped during this period.
Our statewide work further shows that districts blended, braided and sequenced multiple funding sources to extend instructional learning time, strengthen staffing and provide learning supports.
We also studied the impact of recovery investments and specific district recovery programs. We did not find that increased federal Covid funding to schools increased student test scores post-pandemic. However, districts that devoted funds to teacher retention efforts and extended learning time showed more improvement in student attendance, a key to improving academic outcomes.
Cross-sector partnerships advance whole-child development
Prolonged school closure, social isolation, economic anxiety, housing and food insecurity, Covid-19 infection, and the loss of loved ones exacerbated a national mental health crisis already underway before the pandemic. In 2021, 42% of high school students nationwide experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and 32% attempted or seriously considered attempting suicide. As schools reopened, educators found themselves dealing with not just academic learning, but also support for basic needs (such as food and health care), mental health, and life skills (such as relationship skills).
Some districts pivoted to fostering whole-child development. For example, Compton Unified partnered with community health providers to offer health care services (such as vaccinations and check-ups), and Del Norte Unified leveraged Medi-Cal reimbursements to provide mental health counseling and therapy sessions. Educators will still need to deal with the academic, behavioral and life-skills needs for years to come. More cross-sector partnerships with public health, social services and housing would better equip schools to address these challenges.
School innovations foster a rebound in learning
Overall spending infusions have helped students rebound, but the impact has been relatively small. More important is how Covid relief funds were spent by districts. Our longitudinal case study of nine districts revealed some substantial organizational changes — reforms that may stick over time.
One large structural reform was the investment in student well-being. Before the pandemic, student well-being was considered mostly secondary to instruction and academic achievement. However, the pandemic highlighted the need to integrate life skills into instruction. As a result, districts invested in new program materials and moved resources to hire counselors, social workers, psychologists, and increased student access to school-based supports. Some even built new community centers where students and families come together.
A smaller scale, yet key, reform is districts’ investment in career pathways. Districts like Compton and Milpitas Unified offer a wide variety of pathways — from E-sports to computer science to early education — that are tied to on-the-job internships and certificates. These pathways have played an important role in engaging students and connecting them with employment opportunities.
Districts also tried new approaches to the structure of schooling and classroom practices. For example, Glendale Unified shifted to a seven-period block schedule that allowed middle and high school students to add an elective course that sparked their interest. In Poway Unified, small groups of students meet with teachers and classroom aides to focus on specific skill areas.
Digital innovations engage students, but gaps remain
Many districts have turned to digital innovations to motivate kids. In Poway, coaches embedded in the classroom work with teachers to build learning stations, where stronger students work in teams, freeing teachers to provide more direct instruction to kids at risk of falling behind.
Unfortunately, since the pandemic, the digital divide has narrowed, but it has not been eliminated.
In spring 2020, when schools abruptly shifted online, 40% of California households with school-age children did not have reliable internet or devices for distance learning. Over time, the state has made remarkable progress in device access, but not as much progress with internet access. The lack of progress could be attributed to multiple factors, including the absence of pre-existing infrastructure and affordability challenges. Federal and state governments provided unprecedented investments (such as the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program and California Senate Bill 356) to address barriers to universal broadband access; however, communities face significant challenges in building out infrastructure and improving affordability.
The pandemic provided an unprecedented opportunity to rethink and restart public education. Given the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, learning disruptions will become the new norm for many communities throughout the U.S.
By learning from the example of districts that have demonstrated resilience and success in pandemic recovery, we can better prepare for future disruptions and build a more resilient public education that supports all students.
•••
Niu Gao is a principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Julian Betts is a professor at UC San Diego. Jonathan Isler and Piper Stanger are administrators at the California Department of Education.
Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, was part of the research team and contributed to this report.
This collaboration research is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305X230002 to the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Any errors or misinterpretations belong to the authors and do not reflect the views of the institute, the U.S. Department of Education or the California Department of Education.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Many California school districts pay cities and counties millions of dollars a year to put law enforcement officers on campuses, moving tax dollars allocated for education to policing with little oversight by elected school boards, an EdSource investigation found.
Not every district has what are commonly called school resource officers. Many call 911 if they need help, and 20 have their own police departments. Others contract with cities and counties, which provide resource officers from the ranks of local police, sheriffs, and probation departments.
Those districts provided a combined 118 contracts, entered into between 2018 and 2024, with some paying as many as three cities and counties for resource officers. The agreements, along with school board agendas and videos of meetings, show that district leaders rarely scrutinize the spending publicly.
School boards routinely approve policing contracts without discussion, often bundling them with routine items, such as field trips and cookies for staff meetings, into a single vote. The practice, known as using a “consent agenda,” alarms government transparency experts. EdSource found some boards approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for school resource officers using consent votes.
Although the federal government recommends that school districts review their policing programs annually, most of the contracts EdSource reviewed did not require yearly evaluations. In the few districts that required written reports on officers’ activities, police agencies didn’t submit them — and school officials rarely asked to see them.
The state Education Department offers no guidance to districts on policing contracts, said Elizabeth Sanders, an agency spokesperson.
“Consent items can be horrifically abused.”
David Loy, legal counsel for the First Amendment Coalition
The contracts EdSource obtained show districts spending at least $85 million on school resource officers. But their total costs are likely much higher. Roughly 20% of those contracts don’t include specific dollar amounts.
Instead, they mention unspecified charges based on law-enforcement union contracts negotiated by cities and counties. As a result, school boards sometimes approve contracts without a clear record of how much public money they have agreed to spend.
EdSource found that many districts are not only paying for officers whose positions are already funded by local governments, but also for using police cars, uniforms and cellphones.
The costs to schools surprised policing experts and public watchdogs.
“It’s protect and serve — and profit,” said retired state Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell, who also served as San Jose’s independent police auditor from 2010 to 2015.
She said cities and counties should provide resource officers to schools without charging.
“Shame on them for making this into a money-making operation,” Cordell said.
‘An enhanced service’
In many districts, the cost of a contract for a resource officer often exceeds the salary of a mid-career teacher.
The Holtville Unified School District in Imperial County has a one-year contract with the county for a sheriff’s deputy not to exceed $192,038.40.
That’s enough money to fund the salaries of nearly two teachers, according to teacher pay disclosure forms filed with the state.
The contract requires the district to pay for the officer’s “training, equipment, uniform, vehicle, supplies and employee benefits,” Undersheriff Robert Benavidez wrote in an email. Holtville Superintendent Celso Ruiz did not respond to questions about spending on officers.
Some districts spend more than a million dollars a year on resource officers.
The Elk Grove Unified School District has 67 schools and 62,000 students, and pays the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office $8.5 million over three years to provide six deputies.
The contract, which expires in June, includes nearly $648,000 for patrol cars and $15,000 for cellphone bills, and guarantees deputies five hours of overtime per week. The district also pays the city of Elk Grove $951,000 over three years for three officers.
Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a sheriff’s office spokesperson, said the district is “paying for an enhanced service,” requiring deputies to spend all day in schools.
Asked whether deputies assigned to the district were counted in the sheriff’s annual budget funded by the county, Gandhi replied, “Yes, for regular sheriff services.”
But when deputies work in schools, he said, they provide a service for which the sheriff’s entitled to charge.
“These are not officers that are simply responding to emergencies,” Gandhi said. “They’re on campus. That’s their full-time assignment. They’re helping the administration. It’s a presence issue. It’s something we value.”
If Elk Grove Unified were to end its contract with the county, which it could do with 30 days’ notice, the deputies would “be assigned to regular, other, sheriff functions, in patrol, investigations, corrections, whatever,” Gandhi said, noting that the sheriff’s office has a large number of vacant, budgeted positions.
‘Double taxation’
Many districts pay more than half or all of the salaries for officers whose positions are already funded by cities and counties.
In Ventura County, the Oxnard Union High School District currently has contracts with two cities and the sheriff’s office. The largest is a $2.23 million deal with the city of Oxnard for five police officers, which includes 75% of the city’s costs for the officers’ salaries and benefits.
The district pays for the full costs of one deputy as part of its three-year, $625,000 pact with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office. It also has a deal with the city of Camarillo for police services.
Oxnard Union board member Karen Sher, who describes herself as an advocate for school resource officers, told EdSource that charging districts for officers whose positions are already funded amounts to “double taxation.”
“The taxpayer’s paying twice for the same services,” Sher said.
“I really don’t understand how this is not a bigger issue. I have asked the question publicly. I can’t even tell you how many times, and I have never gotten an answer,” she said.
Former Oxnard Police Cmdr. Louis Mc Arthur was in charge of school resource officers before being elected as the city’s mayor in November 2024.Credit: J. Marie / EdSource
Oxnard Mayor Luis Mc Arthur, who, until taking office on Dec. 8, was the Oxnard Police commander in charge of school resource officers, said the city can’t afford to provide the officers without charging the school system. The department’s 2024-25 budget is $105 million, records show.
“We’re strapped financially and also short-staffed,” McArthur said.
“We can argue philosophically if it’s the responsibility of police to fund” resource officers, but the charges will likely continue, he said.
Districts should not fund officers who are already on government payrolls, said David Kline, vice president of communications for the California Taxpayers Association, which advocates for limiting taxes.
“If taxpayers are paying for two police officer positions, they should be getting two police officers,” Kline said. “They shouldn’t be paying twice for the same officer.”
Not all municipalities charge for providing resource officers.
Last year, voters in the Central Valley cities of Manteca and Lathrop passed sales-tax measures funding a range of services, including resource officers for the Manteca Unified School District, which supported the measures.
“We don’t believe in double taxation,” said Victoria Brunn, the district’s chief business and information officer.
But the Manteca district also has a two-year, $274,000 contract with the Stockton Unified School District, which has its own police department, for one officer.
Cost-sharing is common across the country, said Mo Canady, executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers. The percentage of an officer’s salary that districts pay varies widely, he said. “Some may pay 25%, while others will pay 100%.”
Canady recommends that school boards review policing contracts annually. “You get to the end of the school year and no one thinks, ‘Hey, we need to take an hour or two here and sit down with people that are going to be making decisions and at least review this thing.’”
‘In case of an armed intruder’
A poll released earlier this month by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that 4 out of 5 public school parents are worried about a mass shooting at their local school, and nearly as many support having at least one armed police officer on campus while school is in session.
The Anderson Union High School District’s three-year contract with the Shasta County Probation Department does not mention school security. But Superintendent Brian Parker said that’s why the district is paying $1.6 million for three resource officers through 2027.
Anderson Union High School in Anderson in Shasta County.Credit: Thomas Peele / EdSource
“The main reason our board and our community want officers on campus is to provide security in case of an armed intruder,” Parker wrote in an email. “Thankfully, that hasn’t happened in our district.”
Many contracts require officers to divide their time between several campuses, which could reduce their ability to respond quickly to a shooting.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, there were about 24,900 school resource officers in 2019. The federal government does not collect data on school shootings, but according to a Washington Post database, there have been at least 428 school shootings in the United States since 1999, including 72 in California.
Whether the presence of school resource officers makes schools and students safer remains the subject of research and debate. In 2024, policy analysts at the Rand Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, reviewed dozens of studies and found, “the presence of SROs (school resource officers) may reduce some types of crime and increase the detection of weapons and drugs on campus.”
But, the Rand analysts wrote, “research has also shown that the presence of SROs inflicts costs on students. Students at schools with SROs are more likely to face disciplinary action by school administrations and more law enforcement contact in general. Black and Latino students may be particularly affected.”
‘We wanted to look at everything’
Last year, the Folsom Cordova Unified School Board decided to examine its policing contracts with the city of Folsom and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, which totaled $502,000. Those contracts had remained largely unchanged for 12 years, said board President Christopher Clark.
Christopher Clark, president of the Folsom Cordova Unified School Board.Credit: Folsom Cordova Unified
“What we wanted to do as a school district is be transparent. We wanted to look at everything in the contract,” Clark told EdSource.
At a board meeting last May to discuss the contracts, speakers expressed concerns about the impact police officers had on Black and Latino students.
Van Merrill, a student board member, said he worried about having “armed police officers on campus.” He said the district has many students who come from groups that “have been historically discriminated against and arrested and killed by police.”
Earl F. Smith, a parent who attempted to speak to police about a problem with his daughter at school, told the board that a Folsom High School administrator described him to a resource officer as “an angry, raving black man.”
“I’m scared to go to Folsom High School,” Smith said. He referred to the 2018 fatal shooting of a 22-year-old unarmed Black man by two Sacramento Police Department officers who said they mistook his phone for a handgun.
“It’s easy to make wrong decisions. It’s hard on the officer. It’s hard on the community,” Smith said. “ I would like the board to consider the perspective that maybe only a certain amount of students would feel comfortable with an officer.”
In a telephone interview, Smith said, “I don’t think there should be an officer at a school walking around with a gun.”
Clark, the board president, who is Black, told EdSource that Smith “absolutely” voiced valid concerns. “I’m speaking as an African American,” said Clark. “We are stereotyped. Oh, yeah. I’ve been stereotyped by a police officer.”
The board eventually approved a change to the contract, requiring officers to spend more time patrolling the areas around schools and to respond to emergencies in schools when needed.
“What works for me is that these officers are actually patrolling the area,” Clark told EdSource. “If there happens to be an emergency, the response time is within three and a half minutes. I believe in safety for our kids.”
‘Unaware’ of requirements
The U.S. Justice Department recommends that law-enforcement agencies and school districts “conduct an annual assessment” of resource-officer programs to ensure that they are adequately addressing all expectations, successes, and challenges.”
Both school and police leadership should review law enforcement data and records to help determine whether officers “are using their law-enforcement powers judiciously,” according to the department’s recommendations.
But many school districts don’t seek or receive such data even when they require it by contract.
The Manteca Unified School District in San Joaquin County has a one-year, $125,000 contract for a resource office with the Stockton Unified School District, which has its own police department. The contract requires officers to document “the type, nature and/or description of activities performed each shift” to help school officials evaluate the program’s effectiveness. The reports are to be provided quarterly.
The contract also requires Stockton Unified Police to provide “copies of incident, crime, service and other police-generated reports, search warrants and other public documents which concern substantial actual or potential criminal activity.”
But EdSource found that Stockton Unified police gave no such documents to Manteca. Asked why the reports weren’t provided, Stockton Unified Chief Mayra Franco said she didn’t know anything about them.
“We were unaware of this requirement,” she wrote in an email, adding that her department would start providing the documents.
Brunn, Manteca Unified’s chief business officer, called the failure of Stockton Unified to provide the documents “very unfortunate.” But she also said no one in her district asked for them.
”We had employee changes during that time frame. It’s not what we would have preferred to have happened,” she said.
Parker, the Anderson Union High School District superintendent, said its contract with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, which used to provide school resource officers, required deputies to prepare quarterly activity reports on their activities and provide them to the district “upon request.”
But the district “never requested them,” Parker said, and no longer has a contract with the sheriff’s office. The district’s current contract with the Shasta County Probation Department doesn’t include any reporting requirements.
Canady, of the school resource officer association, questioned whether reports are necessary.
“What would go in a report?” he said. “I don’t think it’s something that school districts have been demanding. If you’re in a good partnership with the law enforcement agency, there shouldn’t be any need for reports.”
Last year, during the debate about law enforcement contracts for the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, school board member Kara Lofthouse said that reports are crucial to understanding the effectiveness of policing programs.
They are needed “so that we can determine whether or not it’s a smart decision” to continue to pay for police. Without them, Lofthouse added, “we cannot make a sound decision on what’s best for our district.”
She said officers should write reports to “show the schools that they’re going to, even if they’re doing nothing, even if they’re checking in with the principal and they have lunch with a couple of kids. That’s really the report I want to see. I want to see what their time is being spent doing.”
The Tracy Unified School District’s contract with the city of Tracy requires police to provide “statistics related to crime if requested.” But the district told EdSource that it did not have any documents with that data. It also did not respond directly to questions about how it determined whether policing services were successful.
“Our district works extremely closely with our officers and Tracy Police. We communicate through in-person meetings, phone calls, etc.,” Bobbie Etcheverry, a district spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Consent votes
Some school boards approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for resource officers using catch-all consent votes, records show.
Policing contracts require more scrutiny and “should not be on consent agendas,” said Barbara Fedders, a University of North Carolina law professor who has written about school policing in California and is a school board member herself.
“Your contract language for a playground provider doesn’t implicate your values as a school district in the same way that a (contract) with the police does,” Fedders said.
“Consent items can be horrifically abused,” said David Loy, legal counsel for the First Amendment Coalition, which advocates for government transparency and press freedoms.
Loy said that two school board votes identified by EdSource may have violated the Brown Act, the state law requiring local legislative bodies to conduct open and transparent meetings.
The agenda for Elk Grove Unified’s board meeting, section VI.10, specifies that the contracts on the attached list “are under the bid limit of $99,100.
In June 2022, Elk Grove Unified’s school board approved its current contracts with the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office and the city of Elk Grove on a consent vote.
The meeting’s consent agenda stated that all the items under consideration cost no more than $99,100. But the contracts with the Sheriff’s Office and the city included payments for $2.7 million and $317,000, respectively.
The list referenced by the agenda includes two law enforcement contracts worth a combined $3 million, both well over the stated $99,100.
“If an agency says, ‘Don’t worry, nothing to see here, everything on the consent agenda is under $99,100,’ and in fact, what’s on the consent agenda is more than $99,100 over the life of the contract, that is itself a Brown Act violation,” Loy said. “I would argue strongly in court you cannot mislead the public.”
Kristen Coates, the district’s deputy superintendent, wrote in an email that the district did not violate the Brown Act because the law contains “no requirement to agendize items based on dollar figures.”
She declined multiple requests to be interviewed. Board President Michael Vargas did not return messages.
A vote in San Joaquin County also raises questions about how boards approve police contracts.
In 2022, Tracy Unified’s board voted for a consent agenda that included “routine agreements, expenditures, and notices of completions.” As part of that vote, the board approved a $900,000 contract with the city of Tracy to provide three resource officers.
The contract was not listed on the consent agenda. A report attached to the larger meeting agenda said the contract was for $450,000 over two years. The board did not discuss the contract before voting.
“The public obligated $900,000, not $450,000,” Loy said. “As a best practice, these things should not be on consent. The public has a right to know what the total obligation is for the life of the contract.”
In an interview, Tracy Superintendent Robert Pecot did not explain why the agenda misstated the contract’s cost. “We’re not hiding anything,” he said. “People are welcome to come to our meetings.”
Loy said lawmakers need to amend the Brown Act “to limit the use of consent agendas.” Items such as school policing contracts should be debated, he said. “You should go through the full democratic process. It definitely cries out for significant policy reform.”
Bret Harte Union High School in Angels Camp in Calaveras County.Credit: Thomas Peele / EdSource
‘Sloppy’ practices
Some school boards wait months or even years to ratify contracts for resource officers and, in a few cases, long after those contracts have taken effect or expired, EdSource found. Under state law, school superintendents can agree to contract terms, but those agreements aren’t valid until school boards approve them, a process known as ratification.
The Bret Harte Union High School District in Calaveras County has a one-year policing contract with the city of Angels Camp with a start date listed as July 2, 2024. The district’s board voted to ratify that contract on Feb. 4, 2025. By that time, the city had billed the district more than $35,000 for a resource officer, records show.
Long ratification delays are “an extremely bad budgeting practice,” said Kline of the California Taxpayers Association. “What happens if the school board votes ‘no’ on a contract seven months after it’s been signed?”
It’s “a huge transparency issue,” he added. “The taxpayers haven’t had their notice and chance to voice their opinions.”
Bret Harte’s board also didn’t ratify a separate contract with Angels Camp until two years after it had expired, voting only after EdSource raised questions about it.
Superintendent Scott Nanik initially claimed that the district couldn’t produce a policing contract for the 2022-23 school year. But Angels Camp records show the city billed the district nearly $45,000 for policing services for that school year.
Nanik had signed the document on Aug. 2, 2022. Last month, the board voted without comment to retroactively ratify the deal.
Byron Smith, a lawyer for the district, wrote in an email that the late ratification vote was taken under a portion of state law allowing school districts the “flexibility to create their own unique solutions” and to spend money “not inconsistent with the purposes for which the funds were appropriated.”
Bret Harte leaders “are committed to doing things the right and legal way,” Smith said.
Professor David Levine of UC Law San Francisco said the board likely voted to ward off any potential litigation by making the contract “a proper expenditure.”
“Imagine if you had a gadfly saying it wasn’t a proper use of public funds,” and suing because there was never a vote, Levine said. The district had been “clearly sloppy,” he added.
School boards “should be approving contracts before the related work begins, not afterward,” said Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Boards Association.
EdSource found another school board, Benicia Unified in Solano County, that had not voted to ratify a $225,000 policing contract with the city of Benicia for the 2023-2025 school years.
In response to a reporter’s questions, Benicia Superintendent Damon Wright acknowledged the district made a mistake. “The contract should have been formally brought back to the board for final approval,” he said.
On April 10, three months before the contract expires, the board approved the agreement, without discussion, on the consent agenda.
Seventh-graders work together on homework in their school library.
Credit: Allison Shelley / EDUimages
Mental health has been at the center of former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy’s personal journey to recovery from addiction as well as his public career as a policymaker, author and advocate.
In 2008, while representing Rhode Island in the U.S. House of Representatives, Kennedy wasthe lead author of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, a federal law that requires health insurance companies to provide equal coverage for mental health and addiction care and general physical health care, such as diabetes or cancer treatment.
Forner U.S. Rep, Patrick J. Kennedy, D-R.I.
Kennedy, who has long been vocal about pursuing treatment for his substance use and bipolar disorder, remains an advocate for greater access to mental health care. Earlier this year, he published his book “Profiles in Mental Health Courage” — a reference to his late uncle and former President John F. Kennedy’s classic “Profiles in Courage” — detailing how people from diverse backgrounds across the country have taken on mental illness and addiction. In October, he was a keynote speaker at the annual student wellness conference Wellness Together in Anaheim, where he spoke about his advocacy as founder of the mental health policy nonprofit The Kennedy Forum.
“As we turn the corner on stigma related to suicide and overdose, we need to finally focus a lot more on solutions early on in a person’s life,” Kennedy said in an interview with EdSource. Not only are young people less likely to seek help due to stigma, but are also less likely to be properly insured, incurring high out-of-pocket costs for treatment when they need it.
For Kennedy, the key to addressing the youth mental health and addiction crisis is increasing and sustaining funding for care on the local, state and federal levels. He emphasized that schools desperately need the bulk of that funding, given that early intervention significantly reduces a child’s chance of developing a serious mental illness in adulthood.
California has, in recent years, invested heavily in expanding mental health support for children and adolescents. The state’s next challenge, Kennedy said, is sustaining these crucial services.
In 2019, the state embarked on a $4.7 billion Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, focused mainly on recruiting and training new mental health providers across the state’s school system. To help sustain these programs, the state Department of Health Care Services plans to make new public school-based mental health services billable to both Medi-Cal and commercial health insurance, making California’s multi-payer fee schedule one of the largest school reimbursement programs in the country.
EdSource interviewed Kennedy about expanding mental health care for students and families. His remarks have been edited for length and clarity.
How do we address the enduring impact of stigma on our health and education systems?
We need greater literacy (regarding mental health) across the board. Many don’t know these mentalillnesses as brain illnesses, and they don’t understand that they’re treatable. If we knew we could treat them successfully, which we can, especially if we go in early, how can we think about them differently? We don’t let cancer get to stage four to treat it. We screen it, screen it, screen it. It’s embedded in my medical chart. My doctor asks me 15 ways about my risk for stroke and cancer. We need to do that with mental health.
We could address so much of this if we just incorporated better mental health services within our community. So many families have their mental health symptoms exacerbated by lack of stable housing, no supportive employment and a lack of community to help. They become isolated, which is the worst thing for those struggling with their mental health.
Why does the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act matter for young people today?
It used to be the case where, if you had a mental illness, you had to pay higher co-pays, premiums and deductibles to get mental health treatment than you would to get diabetes treatment or asthma treatment. Unlike for physical illnesses, insurance companies would cap the total of dollars you could spend as a patient on mental health. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act established that insurance companies could not discriminate and treat the brain any differently than any other organ of the body.
Ultimately, we can’t treat everyone based upon bake sales. We have to change the metrics of what constitutes value in our mental health system. We have to get this embedded in regular insurance.
How can California ensure that new school-based coverage for mental health care is effective in the long term?
We have to figure out how to reorient the insurance process so that there’s a way of capturing the return on investment from an earlier investment. The state is the one that has the most to say about overall state coverage for mental health early on, in order to reduce future obligations on the state’s part, which means picking up the pieces of a broken population that hasn’t properly been supported by coverage through early intervention services.
We need to get organized as voters. There’s not a family out there that doesn’t have these issues affecting a member of their family, who hasn’t lost a loved one to suicide or overdose. There’s a huge need for mental health treatment because we keep waiting till people are in a crisis. Why not make this a public health issue and really embed resources in elementary and secondary schools so students can take care of themselves?
What role should the federal government play in addressing youth mental health?
We need to have Federally Qualified Health Centers in every public school in America. They could open satellites in each of the schools that can help treat kids where they are. A lot of kids, particularly from minority communities, are not going to get mental health care after school. You could bring tele-mental health into a school nurse’s office, so it’s not just where you get an aspirin, but a real clinic in the school where you could be meeting kids’ health needs writ large. You’d also need ongoing intensive care to connect them to the community health center outside.
We already fund Federally Qualified Health Centers. It’s supported on a bipartisan basis. It covers the uninsured as well as the insured. These centers and Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers cover a lot of rural areas and health deserts, and they can provide general counseling and support services. They have a board of directors, who are all people in the community who know the resources in the community and can pull together a more wraparound, holistic approach.
So many kids come to school from homes where there’s violence, addiction or mental illness. We need to reach the whole family. In many states where Republicans don’t have good benefits for their people, the centers provide a valuable safety valve for their constituents to get health care. We just need to take that model to scale in schools. The easiest thing is to run all of these through existing bureaucracies, so you’re not trying to create a new system from whole cloth.
How can students help address mental health?
I would say to young people that there are two major ways they can really help the system. One, they can learn about how to prevent mental health challenges themselves through learning about their own brain and learning coping skills and problem-solving skills. We can focus on a lot more upstream, or proactive, mechanisms early in a student’s life, when they can start to build different coping skills and learn how to manage their emotions.
And second, if they’re interested in going into the mental health space, they can create a much better track to get into the mental health field. We just don’t have enough hands on deck to really meet the enormity of the need for those who desperately need treatment. Not only do we need to build that infrastructure and access, but also build a workforce pipeline for those trying to go into the field in greater numbers.
It’s got everything to do with young people. These are illnesses where 50% of them occur before the age of 14, and 75% occur before the age of 25. They’re illnesses of the young; they can take you hostage and take out whole parts of your life, when, ordinarily, you’d be in the most productive period in your life as a young person.
A teacher reviews students’ project notes on a computer.
Credit: Allison Shelley for EDUimages
TOp takeaways
California issued 17,328 new teaching credentials during the 2023-24 school year, an 18% increase.
At the beginning of this school year, district officials estimated they needed about 25,000 new teachers to fill their classrooms.
Enrollment in teacher candidate programs dropped by more than 3,000 teacher candidates between 2019-20 and last school year.
California issued 18% more teaching credentials last school year, compared with the previous year, but education experts remain only cautiously optimistic. The uptick comes after two years of declines, a drop in enrollment in teacher preparation programs and apprehension about federal and state funding.
During the 2023-24 school year, 17,328 teachers earned a preliminary or clear credential — 2,666 more than the previous year. This was the first increase in new credentialed teachers since 2020-21, when the pandemic shuttered schools, according to the recently released “Teacher Supply in California” report to the Legislature.
The increase offers a glimmer of hope amid an enduring teacher shortage. However, the new teachers may not be enough to fill the classrooms vacated by retiring teachers and to replace teachers with emergency permits and waivers. New threats to teacher preparation funding could also hurt program enrollment, erasing last year’s gains.
“At a time when schools across the nation are facing teacher shortages, the growth in California’s newly credentialed teachers indicates that state investments in teacher recruitment are beginning to pay off,” said Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. “While these findings are a bright spot for California’s education system, we recognize the significant shortage of qualified teachers that still exists and encourage those interested in positively impacting our state’s youth to consider teaching as a profession.”
California has spent $1 billion since 2018 to recruit and retain teachers to end the state’s teacher shortage. State leaders directed the funding to financial support for teacher candidates, to grants for residency programs, and to make it easier for school support staff to earn a degree and a teaching credential.
Some teachers aren’t properly credentialed
Without enough fully credentialed teachers to fill all the classrooms, school districts have had to hire teachers on intern credentials and emergency-style permits and waivers. Last school year, 5% of the state’s teachers were not qualified to teach the classes they taught, according to state data.
California’s teacher supply has been in a constant state of flux since the Great Recession, which began in 2007, caused large-scale teacher layoffs. The number of new California teaching credentials was 14,810 in 2013, before beginning a seven-year climb to 19,673 in 2020-21. The Covid pandemic interrupted that ascent, resulting in two years of decreases that ended last school year.
Although the numbers have increased, there still aren’t enough fully credentialed teachers to fill all of California’s classrooms. Before the beginning of this school year, district officials estimated they would have to collectively hire nearly 25,000 new teachers — 169 more than in the 2023-24 school year, according to the California Department of Education data.
Declining enrollment in teacher preparation programs could further impact the number of fully credentialed teachers in the classroom. Enrollment dropped from 41,978 in 2019-20 to 38,596 last school year. While new enrollment increased by 1,166 students between 2022-23 and last school year, there were 3,309 fewer continuing students.
The California Center on Teaching Careers had a full cohort of teacher candidates in its program at the beginning of the school year, but that number has dwindled in the last several months as federal funding became questionable, Lopez said. He suspects the students left when the financial incentives dried up, or after finding other, more affordable pathways.
“Grant programs are designed to make high-quality preparation more affordable,” said Dana Grayson, teacher workforce director at WestEd. “If there are disruptions in access to that funding, I think we might expect that could impact the number of teachers that are able to get those credentials and complete their certification.
“I think similarly, the programs themselves, if they have uncertainty in their funding landscape, it could lead to hesitancy, or an inability to be able to scale or sustain programming,” she said.
Schools still in need of teachers
The increased number of credentials will bring some relief to school districts that have struggled to fill teaching jobs in subjects like math, science and special education.
The number of math credentials has increased over the last four years, with 1,247 new credentials issued last school year — a 15% increase over the prior year. The number of science credentials rose 7%, or 74 credentials, last school year — but only after four consecutive years of declines.
Nearly 3,500 teachers earned education specialist credentials last school year, compared with 3,051 the year before. Even with the increase, however, fewer new special education credentials were issued last school year than in any of the previous four years, except 2022-23.
Most emergency-style permits still going up
But this year’s report on teaching credentials is not all good. Despite a decrease in some emergency-style waivers and permits, there have been increases in others, as well as in intern credentials, between 2022-23 and last school year:
“I do think these (credential) numbers represent a promising uptick in getting more fully credentialed teachers in the state,” Grayson said. “But, I think sustainability planning is going to be really important to make sure we can support preparation programs, maintaining that affordability and access toward getting those full credentials.”
In the first months of the first Trump administration in 2017, a father in Los Angeles was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after dropping his 12-year-old daughter off at school.
The ripple effect was immediate.
“Right away there was a drop in attendance in L.A. schools because parents were thinking, ‘Oh, if I drop off my kids, ICE is going to pick me up,’” said Ana Mendoza, senior staff attorney at ACLU of Southern California and director of the organization’s Education Equity Project. “The need for safety and sanctuary policies became really salient because students weren’t going to schools or families were tentative about their participation in schools.”
In the wake of this year’s presidential election, there is again widespread uncertainty among immigrant families in California about what is to come, given President-elect Donald Trump’s promises of mass deportation.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta recently released updated guidelines and model policies about what K-12 schools, colleges and universities can and cannot do under state and federal law, regarding keeping immigrant students and families’ data private, when to allow an immigration enforcement officer on campus, how to respond to the detention or deportation of a student’s family member, and how to respond to bullying or harassment of a student based on immigration status.
The original guidelines and policies were released in 2018 by then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra, after California passed Assembly Bill 699, requiring schools to pass policies that limited collaboration with immigration enforcement. Bonta is now asking schools to update their policies.
“School districts should be examining what their board policies are and to make sure they’re updated and take any measures to make sure that families feel safe,” Mendoza said.
An estimated 1 in 10, or 1 million, children in California have at least one undocumented parent. And about 133,000 children in California public schools are undocumented themselves, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
In California’s colleges and universities, an estimated 86,800 students are undocumented, and about 6,800 employees in TK-12 schools, colleges and universities have temporary work permits and protection from deportation under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.
“Undocumented students and faculty and staff are afraid for their safety, and this will impact their retention and enrollment in higher education if they’re not feeling safe or they’re feeling targeted,” said Luz Bertadillo, director of campus engagement for the Presidents’ Alliance for Higher Education and Immigration, a national organization of college and university leaders. “For campuses to have a strong stance on what they’re doing to support undocumented students is important, or at least letting their students know they’re thinking about them and they’re taking action. Even though they cannot guarantee their safety, at least they’re taking those initiatives to safeguard.”
What rights do immigrant students and family members have at school and college, regardless of their immigration status?
The right to attend public school
All children present in the United States, regardless of immigration status, have a right to attend public school. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Plyler v. Doe that states cannot deny students a free, public education based on their immigration status or their parents or guardians’ immigration status. Some states — including California in 1994 with Proposition 187 — and school districts have since attempted to pass laws that would either deny enrollment to students who did not have valid immigration status or report their status to authorities, but all these laws have been struck down by courts.
California schools are not allowed to request or collect information about Social Security numbers, immigration status or U.S. citizenship when enrolling students. Students and parents do not have to answer questions from schools about their immigration status, citizenship or whether they have a Social Security number.
“This often comes up in requests for student documents,” Mendoza said. “I had an intake once where a parent gave a passport during enrollment, and the front office person was asking the parent for a visa. No. The school has no right to ask for documents about your citizenship or immigration status.”
Schools can ask for some information like a student’s place of birth, when they first came to the U.S. or attended school in the U.S., in order to determine whether a student is eligible for special federal or state programs for recently arrived immigrant students or English learners. However, parents are not required to give schools this information, and schools cannot use this information to prevent children from enrolling in school. The Office of the Attorney General suggests that schools should collect this information separately from enrolling students.
Privacy of school records
The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, restricts schools from sharing students’ personal information in most cases with other agencies or organizations, including federal immigration authorities. The law requires that schools get a parent or guardian’s consent before releasing any student information to another agency or organization, or if the student is 18 or older, schools must get consent from the student.
However, in some cases, schools may be required to provide information without consent in response to a court order or judicial subpoena.
Colleges are also restricted from sharing information except in certain cases. Bertadillo said her organization recommends that college leaders have conversations with all the different departments that might manage information about students’ or families’ immigration status, such as information technology, admissions, registrar, and financial aid, to review their practices for storing or sharing the data.
“We hear some campuses have citizenship status on their transcripts and those transcripts get sent to graduate schools, to jobs, and that’s essentially outing students,” Bertadillo said.
She said it’s important for colleges and schools to pass or revisit procedures about what to do if immigration officials ask for data or attempt to enter a campus.
“A lot of institutions created them back in Trump 1.0. We’re recommending they reaffirm or revisit them, so that the campus knows that this is in place,” Bertadillo said.
Safe haven at school
The Department of Homeland Security has designated schools and colleges as protected areas where immigration enforcement should be avoided as much as possible. President-elect Trump has said he may rescind this policy.
In the event that ICE officers do enter schools or ask to question students, the attorney general’s guidelines say school staff should ask officers for a judicial warrant. Without a judicial warrant, school staff are not required to give an ICE officer permission to enter the school or conduct a search, or to provide information or records about a student or family, the guidelines say.
A bill introduced by state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond would establish a “safe zone” of 1 mile around schools and prohibit schools from allowing ICE to enter a campus or share information without a judicial warrant.
Under California law, schools must notify parents or guardians if they release a student to a law-enforcement officer, except in cases of suspected child abuse or neglect.
California law does not require schools to notify parents or guardians before law enforcement officers question a child at school, but it does not prohibit schools from notifying them either. California’s attorney general suggests that school districts and charter schools should create policies that require notification of parents or guardians before a law enforcement officer questions or removes a student, unless that officer has a judicial warrant or court order.
In addition, the attorney general says if a police officer or immigration agent tries to enter a school or talk to a student for purposes of immigration enforcement, the superintendent or principal should e-mail the Bureau of Children’s Justice in the California Department of Justice.
“Schools should retrain their staff on their visitor management policies, to make sure everyone who comes onto campus, including law enforcement, is questioned about what their purpose is, and that school staff is trained on what to do if law enforcement asks to see information about students or staff,” said Mendoza.
Support from school if a family member is detained or deported
If a student reports that their parents or guardians were detained or deported, California law requires that the school must follow parents’ instructions about whom to contact in an emergency. The attorney general’s guidance says “schools should not contact Child Protective Services unless the school is unsuccessful in arranging for the care of the child through the emergency contact information.”
The guidance also suggests that schools should help students and family members contact legal assistance, their consulate, and help them locate their detained family members through ICE’s detainee locator system.
Mendoza said it is important to note that if a student’s parents are detained or deported, and as a result they have to go live with another family member, at that point, they are eligible for support for homeless students under the federal McKinney-Vento Act.
Protection from discrimination and harassment
Federal law prohibits discrimination and harassment based on race, national origin, color, sex, age, disability and religion. California’s law AB 699 also made immigration status a protected characteristic, meaning that schools are required to have policies that prohibit discrimination, harassment and bullying based on immigration status.
Mendoza said it’s important for families and students who experience bullying or harassment to know they can submit complaints through their schools or to different agencies in California. “There are advocates out there willing to support them if their schools do not act in accordance with best practices or with the law,” Mendoza said.
Free lunch, subsidized child care and special education
In California, all students have a right to a free school lunch, since the 2022-23 school year. In addition, some students whose families are considered low-income qualify for subsidized child care, either all day for infants and preschoolers, or after school for school-age children. Students with disabilities have a right to special education to meet their needs, under federal law.
Immigrant families are often afraid to apply for public services because they are worried this will count against them when applying for permanent residency. This is largely due to the “public charge” test, which immigration officers use to determine whether green-card applicants are likely to depend on public benefits.
Currently, immigration officers can only consider whether applicants have used cash assistance for income, like SSI or CalWORKs, or long-term institutionalized care paid for by public insurance, such as Medi-Cal. They do not consider school lunch, child care or food stamps. And officers are not allowed to look at whether applicants’ family members, like U.S. citizen children, use public benefits. During the first Trump administration, the president changed this policy to include family members and some other benefits. It is unclear whether he may attempt to change this again in the future. However, even under the changes during his first term, school lunch and child care were not included.
In-state tuition and scholarships for college
Under the California Dream Act, undocumented students qualify for in-state tuition and state financial aid at California colleges and universities if they attended high school for three or more years or attained credits at community college or adult school and graduated from high school or attained an associate degree or finished minimum transfer requirements at a California community college. The number of students applying for the California Dream Act has plummeted in recent years.
Kindergarten students at George Washington Elementary in Lodi listen to teacher Kristen McDaniel read “Your Teachers Pet Creature” on the first day of school on July 30, 2024.
Credit: Diana Lambert / EdSource
The Social Security Fairness Act, signed by President Joe Biden on Sunday, will increase retirement benefits for many educators and other public sector workers, including nearly 290,000 in California.
The act repeals both the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset laws, which reduced Social Security benefits for workers who are entitled to public pensions, such as firefighters, police officers and teachers, according to the Social Security Department.
The change in the laws does not mean that California teachers, who do not pay into Social Security, will all get benefits. Instead, teachers who paid into Social Security while working in non-teaching jobs will be eligible for their full Social Security benefits, as will those eligible for spousal and survivor benefits.
Teachers who had previous careers, or who worked second jobs or summer jobs, benefit from the repeal of the Windfall Elimination Provision, said Staci Maiers, spokesperson for the National Education Association.
California is one of 15 states that does not enroll its teachers in Social Security. Instead, teachers receive pensions from the California Teachers’ Retirement System, or CalSTRS.
“This is about fairness. These unjust Social Security penalties have robbed public service workers of their hard-earned benefits for far too long,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association in a media release. “They have hurt educators and their families — and damaged the education profession, making it harder to attract and retain educators. And that means students are impacted, too.”
At a press conference Sunday, President Joe Biden said the Social Security Fairness Act would mean an increase on average of $360 a month for workers that have been impacted by the laws. There will also be a lump sum retroactive payment to make up for the benefits that workers should have received in 2024, Biden said. No date has been announced for those payments.
“The bill I’m signing today is about a simple proposition,” Biden said. “Americans who have worked hard all their lives to earn an honest living should be able to retire with economic security and dignity.”
“It’s a game-changer for a lot of educators,” said Kathy Wylie, a retired teacher who lives in Mendocino. Wylie, who is a few years away from drawing Social Security, worked for a technology company for 15 years before embarking on a 17-year career in education.
She expects that the bump in retirement funds could encourage some veteran teachers to retire early.
Biden signed the legislation following decades of advocacy from the National Education Association, the International Association of Fire Fighters and the California Retired Teachers Association. The bipartisan bill was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 12 and the U.S. Senate on Dec. 21.
The amendments to the Social Security Act apply to monthly benefits after December 2023. The Social Security Department is evaluating how to implement the new law, according to its website.
Kindergarten teacher Carla Randazzo watches a student write alphabet letters on a white board at Golden Empire Elementary School in Sacramento.
Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / AP Photo
Insufficient school funding is hurting California teachers and their students, according to “The State of California Public Schools,” a report from the California Teachers Association released Tuesday.
The lack of funding has meant insufficient wages and high health insurance premiums for teachers, crowded classrooms and a lack of support staff, according to the report, which is based on a December survey of almost 2,000 TK-12 educators.
Most of the educators surveyed said that their pay is too low to afford housing near their jobs and that their salaries aren’t keeping up with the rising costs of groceries, childcare and other necessary expenses.
Ninety-one percent of the educators surveyed who rent reported that they can’t afford to buy a home. Only 12% of the teachers surveyed said they were able to save a comfortable amount for the future, while 31% said they are living paycheck to paycheck.
“Many educators are spread thin and frankly aren’t able to make ends meet financially, and are working in a public school system that continues to be underfunded year after year,” said CTA President David Golberg at a press conference Tuesday.
The California Teachers Association represents 310,000 of the state’s educators, including teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists, librarians, education support professionals and some higher education faculty and staff. The survey was conducted for the union by GBAO Strategies, a public opinion research and political strategy firm.
Teachers who took part in the survey, which targeted teachers throughout the state to provide a representative demographic, overwhelmingly agreed that California schools don’t pay high enough salaries to teachers or have the resources to meet the needs of the students.
Eighty-four percent said there aren’t enough staff, resources or training to support special education students, and 76% reported that classrooms are overcrowded. Sixty-eight percent said students lack access to mental health support.
California ranked 18th in per pupil spending in 2021-22, the most recent year nationally comparable data is available – slightly above the national average, according to a November report by the Public Policy Institute of California. When the difference in labor costs were taken into account, California dropped to 34th. In the five years between the 2018-19 school year and the 2023-24 school year, education funding increased nearly 34% in California, according to the PPIC.
“We’re not even in the top 10 when we compare ourselves to other states,” Goldberg said. “So, that shows you the real disconnect from the wealth that exists in our state and the resources that are going to students and educators.”
Almost a third of the teachers surveyed have taken second jobs or gig work to make ends meet, 37% have delayed or gone without medical care and 65% have skipped family vacations because of financial constraints, according to the report.
“These are not extra frills,” Goldberg said. “These are things that we consider part of just the everyday life that us, as human beings and as workers, a dignified life would entail. And, you see that a lot of educators are living with a scarcity around even the most basic things.”
Four out of 10 of the educators surveyed said they are considering leaving the profession in the next few years. Nearly 80% of the teachers said that finances were the primary reason they would consider the job change.
Sacramento-area TK teacher Kristina Caswell said a recent increase in the cost of healthcare premiums at her district swallowed up the recent raise she received. She said the affordability tool on the Covered California website rates her healthcare costs for a family of five as unaffordable.
“I will spend money on my students before I will think about going to that doctor’s appointment that I need and spending that money on maybe a prescription that I need if I get sick,” she said. “That’s something I will stop and think about. Whereas when I’m thinking about my students, I don’t (stop to) think about spending the money.”
Despite their concerns, 77% of teachers surveyed said they still find their job rewarding, although 62% are dissatisfied with their overall working conditions.
“I’m really thankful and grateful that I have the job that I have,” Caswell said. “I absolutely love my job. I adore my students, I adore the families that I serve.”
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